Americans living in Mexico must return to the U.S. to use their Medicare benefits.
U.S. senior citizens living in Mexico should have their medical care covered by Medicare, says Paul Crist, a former senator’s aid who now lives in Puerto Vallarta. In the current debate over health care, Crist’s idea seems to be gaining ground.
Right now, retired U.S. citizens cannot claim Medicare benefits for treatment received in Mexico—or Costa Rica, or France, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter--even though they paid into the Medicare system throughout their working lives.
Crist, a former aid to Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., recently founded the non-profit Americans for Medicare In Mexico, which has lobbied 85 members in the U.S. Congress to get Medicare accepted south of the border.
Estimates of how many Americans live in Mexico (and abroad in general) vary, but the influential Association of Americans Resident Overseas puts the figure at 1,036,300. Crist says perhaps 200,000 of the Americans living in Mexico are eligible for Medicare, with about two-thirds of them returning to the U.S. for medical treatment.
Not only would extending Medicare to Mexico be the right thing to do—if you pay into the system, you should receive the benefits—but Crist maintains in a Forbes article that such a program would also save the U.S. government a lot of money. Studies show that health care services are up to 70% less expensive in Mexico than in the U.S.
For more on Medicare and medical tourism in Mexico, and the Congressional response to Crist’s proposal, visit
Comments
Very interesting article. It makes no sense for the government to not allow Medicare benefits for people living in Mexico.
I live in Costa Rica. The medical costs here are a fraction of what they are in the U.S. But to be treated medically under medicare, we would have to return to the U.S. where the costs are higher. It doesn't make sense for the U.S. citizens living abroad and it doesn't make sense financially not allow Medicare benefits for people living abroad.
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